Reviving the Martini's Lost Ancestor

By

Eric Felten

Updated Dec. 13, 2008 12:01 a.m. ET

Where did the Martini come from? It is a question the exact answer to which is lost to the boozy mists of barroom history. But the rough lineage of the drink is known: the Manhattan -- whiskey and sweet vermouth -- begat the Martinez, a mix of sweetened gin and sweet vermouth, a drink that soon came to be known by the more popular name Martini. But the Martinez-style Martini, made of Old Tom gin, Italian vermouth, bitters, and usually a taste of maraschino liqueur, long ago receded into legend, a missing link between the Manhattan and its evolutionary descendant, the Dry Martini. But now, the missing link can finally be tasted.

Martinez

Carefully stir with ice, and then stir some more. Did I say you could stop stirring? Strain into a stemmed cocktail glass and garnish with a slice of orange peel.

The Martinez-Martini first caught on in the 1880s. But by the turn of the century, the taste for Old Tom gin and sweet vermouth had given way to the new fashion for dry drinks. Sweetened Old Tom had been replaced with different styles of gin -- the unsweetened Plymouth, and the new, explicitly dry London stuff -- and they were being combined with dry French vermouth. Maraschino liqueur may be relatively dry as far as cordials go, but it too was abandoned as the retrograde preference of sweet-toothed rubes.

The change was evident by 1897. In that year, the two most popular cocktails at the Waldorf-Astoria were the Manhattan and the old-school Martini, but there was a new drink on offer, "made up of equal parts of French vermouth and Plymouth gin, with a dash of orange bitters," according to an article in the New York Herald. "This is preferred by many to the combination of Italian vermouth and Tom gin." The author notes that "the present demand is for the dry, and it is considered that an olive is the best substitute for the sugary fruit, and all the swell grillrooms now serve 'cocktail olives.'" The modern Dry Martini had been born.

This evolution has been looked upon as an unambiguous march of progress, and the poor old Martinez-Martini has been given the good-riddance treatment, tossed on the archaeological junk heap somewhere between bustles and high-buttoned shoes. When, in 1995, groundbreaking cocktail historian William Grimes contemplated the Martinez and its relation to the modern Martini, he dismissed it as "little more than a molten gumdrop." And given that just about all the ingredients in the Martinez were officially "sweet," that was a reasonable assumption to make. But it wasn't a judgment based on taste-testing. Authentic Old Tom gin fell so far out of favor a century ago that it had long since disappeared from the market.

As recently as a year ago, David Wondrich lamented in his book "Imbibe!" that hopes for tasting a Martinez were slim: "The loss of Old Tom gin is irreparable."

But no longer. A British spirits company, Hayman Distillers, has dusted off an old family recipe for Old Tom, and the vintage gin is now being brought into the U.S. by importers Haus Alpenz. Hayman's Old Tom gin is a subtle surprise. It isn't just the equivalent of a modern dry gin dosed with sugar. Rather, it is a medium-heavy-bodied spirit in which the slight sweetness is balanced with more robust botanicals -- hello, coriander! -- than most dry gins.

I enjoyed my first honest-to-goodness Martinez a couple of weeks ago at a new bar in Washington called The Gibson. Head bartender Derek Brown acquired an early shipment of Hayman's Old Tom and proceeded to make the Martinez a house special when The Gibson opened in November. He makes the drink with equal parts Old Tom and Carpano Antica Formula sweet vermouth. The Antica Formula can be plenty hard to find, but it is worth searching out since, as a 19th-century style vermouth, it makes the perfect co-ingredient for an authentic Martinez.

To the Old Tom and the vermouth, Mr. Brown adds a spoonful of maraschino liqueur (which is not, I fear I must still point out, the same thing as the syrup from a cherry jar) and a couple of dashes of orange bitters. Like the Manhattan, the Martinez is a drink best stirred rather than shaken -- the heavy viscosity of the Old Tom gin produces a beautifully silky texture when spared the rigors of the cocktail shaker. And Mr. Brown does not skimp on the stirring. Most bartenders whip up a drink with a couple of quick flicks of the shaker, or an impatient twist or two of a spoon in the mixing glass. Mr. Brown gives the drink some 50 complete turns with the spoon.

Nor is that the end of his superior stirring technique. He is among those skilled bartenders who stir not only thoroughly but carefully, creating a vortex in the glass without making the ice clank and clatter. This may seem a silly extravagance, at least it may seem silly until you taste the results. I hurried off to buy some Hayman's Old Tom and mix up some Martinezes of my own. I shook a few, and I also made a batch with the sort of hasty and clumsy stirring that is commonplace. And then I stirred a batch according to the methodology employed by Mr. Brown. And there it was, a drink so good that there can be no doubt why the Martinez-Martini took off long before it dried out.

To finish the drink, Mr. Brown gives the top of the glass a twist of orange peel. I might note that if you cut your orange-peel garnish in the shape of a gold dollar and float it on top of a Martinez-style Martini you get a drink for which there was a brief fad in the midst of 1897's Alaska Gold Rush: a Klondike Cocktail.

As much as I enjoy obscure vintage drinks, the Martinez goes beyond period-piece interest. Devotees of the Dry Martini may find the Martinez too sweet for their tastes, but those who'll take Manhattans will be delighted with what was, after all, a slight variation on that drink. The Martinez is worthy of rejoining the canon of classic cocktails. At last it can be restored to its place in the pantheon.

Mr. Felten is the author of "How's Your Drink?: Cocktails, Culture and the Art of Drinking Well" (Agate Surrey). Email him at eric.felten@wsj.com.

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